The Orphans and Thrognar-Tine Outskirts

  Resh looked at Thrognar seriously. “How? How did you even manage to get a contract like this?” Resh shook the quest scroll in a mixture of disbelief and trepidation.

  “Thrognar, silver adventurer!” He rumbled proudly and gave the “puppy” a fond stroke of its snoot.

  Orlock sighed. “We might die, but if we don’t think of the gold and levels…”

  Resh rubbed his face in frustration. “This isn’t just some slay-a-monster quest. This is to go break up a band of brigands and find out if the neighboring kingdom is using them to sow chaos. Even, even if we manage to defeat a bandit camp, how are we supposed to do that and catch one without one of us getting killed?”

  Lily mindlessly incinerated a butterfly that was flapping in her face obnoxiously. “We could always join them and burn them from the inside out.”

  Thrognar laughed. “But we not bandits!” Everyone looked at him and then at each other. "A bit more weakly Thrognar added. “But we not bandits?”

  “Close enough. Honestly… I have more confidence in convincing a band of brigands they want us on board than just straight up fighting them.” Resh added, putting a supportive hand on Thrognar’s shoulder.

  Orlock nodded. “Yeah, me and Thrognar just punch a few people in the face to prove we are for real. I bet that would get us in.”

  “Is, is Thrognar descending to life of crime like father feared?” His eyes looked panicked.

  Resh held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, big guy, we are just pretending to be bandits, acting.” Thrognar brightened considerably.

  “Pretending” Lily muttered like she didn’t quite believe it.

  “Might have to join em for a job or two before the backstab, though, to really earn their trust…and for some allowance. Greed doesn’t give us shit for allowance.”

  “Yeah, I mean, as long as they don’t, like, knock over some grandma’s bakery, we can definitely play along for a bit…to…learn how they operate…” Thrognar looks both confused and conflicted about the plans for the quest. The “puppy” barked happily, licking its lips with a too-long tongue for just a split second.

  Resh squinted at the “puppy”; the puppy winked at him. Resh sighed and just shook his head. He had no damn clue what the thing really was, but he was reasonably sure it was on their side. Well, at least Thrognar’s side.

  “Alright, let’s go find a shitty tavern and ask some really leading questions!”

  ***

  Egbert- Twitch’s Shanty Town.

  My gods, man, please just call it quits for the day, lie down, and let the suffering end. I started feeling bad for you back when you tried the loot pit. After Boo hunted you for an hour, I actually feel like a villain. Please just stop and go home. You have nothing more to prove; the mere fact you aren’t very dead shows that you are a tough bastard.

  Killgore stumbled the last few steps to Twitch’s apartment front door. His armor had been in useless shambles for the last two rooms. He was more bruise than man, held together by healing potions and a refusal to be beaten.

  Even his students looked at him in open concern. Joe put a hand on Killgore’s shoulder. “Umm, sir. I…think we have explored enough for today… You have done amazing. The dungeon is just a weird one.”

  Killgore whirled on him, a manic look in his eyes. “Cadet, remove your hand from me! We will leave this dungeon after you have been provided with a real-life example of a dungeon boss being slain! Fall In!” He finished sharply and walked powerfully into the grim foyer of Twitch’s lair.

  “Guys, I think he might actually die…” Ben whispered in obvious concern.

  “Yeah, no, that’s a real fucking possibility. If he keeps this up, we might need to help him. Even he isn’t normally this stupid.” Randy seemed surprised about Killgore’s extra unusual behavior.

  Joe pointed to his head. “Brains scrambled like a fucking omelet. Bully bounced him around for a whiilleee down there. I'm betting those potions didn’t quite fix the fucking brain bleed he probably has.

  Carter grumbled to himself, “Guys, should I pull the crown prince card? Literally just to snap him out of whatever macho death spiral he’s currently in?”

  Randy shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea; for that to really apply, you would need to be in imminent danger, and I think that would still just end up with him getting himself killed. All the dungeon bosses are no joke.”

  Ben nearly shouted as an idea came to him like brilliant divine inspiration. “Guys, we’ve just got to convince him some random bug is the boss, and then when he beats it, we can leave!” Everyone looked at him incredulously.

  “How would we even make that work?” Joe asked.

  Ahead of them Killgore had begun the purge of the apartments; whipping winds billowed out of the doorway, nearly knocking them over. “Face me, vile spawn of greed!” bellowed from inside.

  You know… I guess I could help them a bit here…

  Joe almost jumped out of his armor when a loot bug spawned in the air above him, followed by a little bottle of yellow paint. He, by some sheer miracle, managed to catch both.

  Randy looked over with his mouth ajar. “Uhhh…okay? Thanks, Greed? That…is certainly one way. Goddamn, he must really want Killgore out too.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I fucking knew he was always watching! Every snarky word. Every plan, he's always watching us!” Ben suddenly ranted.

  Well, yeah, Ben. And yes, please, this stopped being fun for literally anyone a while ago. Get. Him. Out.

  Randy's squad rushed through the foyer and up the stairs ahead of Killgore to set the stage while Killgore went room to room downstairs battling a handful of hopped-up Banner bugs.

  Killgore burst into the last shabby room on the bottom floor. He sliced left, bisecting a banner bug in a shower of ichor. Its halves landed into a pile of discarded tinfoil with an unsettlingly wet crinkling sound. The other two banner bugs in the room hissed at him from their piles of filth; one raised a rusty cleaver, and the other held a pair of glowing curved daggers obviously stolen from some adventurer.

  The bugs Charged eyes a crazed red and actual foam trailing from their mouths. To his credit, as utterly beat to shit as Killgore was, he still didn’t flinch or falter. The first bug was hit with a wind-empowered roundhouse that splattered him against the nearest wall.

  The one with the glowing daggers slashed forwards, and thin golden lines of mana extended past the blades. Killgore managed to block the deceptively long-ranged enchantment. Then he stepped in close, skewering the Banner bug. He lifted it high with a war cry; it still flailed madly at him, even impaled, spittle spraying from its mandibles.

  Guys, good lord, calm down; this isn’t even an event. Killgore, I’m officially tired of you being in my dungeon. Be thankful I’m helping some of my favorite customers usher you out politely instead of asking Contempt if he wants to add to his kill count. Literally only because I'm pretty sure you dying here would just add to the pain-in-my-ass list that is growing daily.

  Also...I may try and bribe the shit out of Randy’s squad to defend me whenever the mages come. So having them “owe me one” doesn’t hurt.

  Egbert zoomed up to the second floor, where Randy and the others were setting the scene. They had pulled out some torches to light dramatically in the very first adjacent room from the stairs. Carter was painting shitty, crude lightning bolts all over the doorway.

  Joe and Randy were a bit preoccupied just trying to keep the loot bug in the room. It had escaped Joe’s grasp, and now the two of them were acting as wardens to the doorway, repeatedly corralling it back into a pile of bottles and wrappers that tumbled off a shoddy bed.

  Carter saw Killgore stomping up the stairs; he took his chance. “Killgore! Killgore, we found the lair!” Carter did his best to feign panic.

  Killgore didn’t even respond, dashing straight into the room, sword at the ready. He looked ready to pass out on the spot. Everyone else cleared out as he squared up with the manic creature hissing in its pile of trash.

  Killgore bombed forward in a downward two-handed slice that swirled with condensed wind mana. Stone split, and trash was tossed strides down the hall with the sheer concussive blast his blow imparted on the poor loot bug. The room was a trashed tangle of broken glass, shredded furniture, and the slightest smear of what might once have been a sacrificial loot bug with a single yellow lightning bolt shoddily painted upon its shell.

  “Ha! And that, students, is how you slay a dungeon boss! Lesson over; it’s high time we get back to the academy,” Killgore shouted triumphantly with more than a slight slur to his words.

  “Thank all the gods above and below,” Ben muttered under his breath.

  Oh, I absolutely agree with you, Ben; that was exhausting for me as well. All that wasted time, and that man barely even spent any coins. I, for one, am thoroughly done with all of this!

  Egbert imagined himself gesturing rudely at the class but mostly Killgore before he flew back towards Contempt’s Chapel; a small party was trying to scale it, and he wanted to see how that went for them.

  ***

  Nomisa—Gathering Of The Gods

  Nomisa was practically beside himself with glee. He knew it was worth it to save up nearly a century of essence to install the dungeon on the mortal plane. Things had been so stagnant for him of late, so damned repetitive.

  A few prayers from bankers and merchants here and there. Every once in a while a gambler would bet it all and win, praising his name and dedicating the winnings towards his majesty. That was all well and good—his bread and butter for the last millennium.

  But Egbert, that beautiful, creative, penny-pinching bastard, had lived up to every expectation he had so far. In life he was more vocal to good old Abbicus, but every time he went the extra mile. Dug just a bit deeper into the finances than he needed to or pulled out some bullshit obscure law to scrape a few more coins from someone’s purse.

  Those, those were all actions that venerated Nomisa. Because he didn’t do it to be exact, he did it because he could. Egbert loved watching those bags of gold build up in the king’s treasury. He spent far longer than he needed counting and recounting piles of gold and platinum before delivery.

  Nomisa was sure that if he gave Egbert the tools and just unleashed the bastard, he would be a force to be reckoned with, and by him, he was right. Egbert, in less than three months at this point, was starting to destabilize the regional economy and move a neighboring nation to war.

  And most fun of all, garner complaints from the other gods—so, so many complaints that they couldn’t do a damned thing about it because Nomisu had spent so much fucking essence ensuring Egbert’s powers would be far-reaching and flexible that every direct attempt at intervention had immediately met the system’s response of “No, I said he could do that. Yes, I will make sure it’s fair.”

  That had escalated to the point that there was an open discussion being held among all the gods who wished to join and voice complaints or suggestions. Of course the primary problem was Rembrand that obnoxious control freak was having an utter hissy fit about a new power that was utterly out of his reach.

  Nomisa walked into the plain white room and looked at the massive oval table the gods were seated around. He was stunned at how many had come. The table was arranged with him at one end and Rembrand at the opposite end. Those that supported him sat on his side; those there to voice complaints to the system sat on the other end.

  Good old Abbicus, appearing as a mousy man with big glasses and a combover, was sitting directly next to his chair. Nomisa froze in confusion at the other deity sitting directly on his side. It was a savage, hateful thing made of swirling claws and fangs that barely restrained itself from pouncing on the terrified-looking god of gambling next to it.

  Uhhhh, when did Vurune come back? I thought that psychotic nature god died out after the Elysian fucked everything up… well, I guess I'm glad he's on my side? Wait, why is he on my side? He literally lives to watch shit hunt and die!

  Nomisa nodded pleasantly to Abbicus and gave a confused wave to the swirling mass of dark green hunger that was Vurune. To his dismay a pair of eyes solidified in the maelstrom long enough to stare at him.

  Nomisa leaned over towards Abbicus. “What the fuck? How is Vurune back, and why is he on my side?”

  Abbicus pointed across the table to the form Rembrand chose. An obnoxiously perfect mid-fifties man with impeccably cropped hair. A clean-shaven chin that looked like it was carved from granite and a dozen souls scattered behind him bowing low. His eyes radiated annoyance, displeasure, and wrath, but to Nomisa’s surprise, it wasn’t just at him.

  Rembrand’s gaze swiveled between Nomisa, Vurune, and a third figure near the center of the table, an ethereal-looking woman with a haze of rainbowy colors obscuring her already indistinct features.

  Abbicus whispered conspiratorially. “So Mr. Life, Death, and Hunger over there,” he pointed at Vurune. “And Rembrand has been in a pissing match since Vurune came back almost single-handedly because his new champion keeps feeding Rembrand’s followers to Vurune. So I think he’s here just to flip of Rembrand. The lady in the middle, though? I have utterly no idea. I think she’s another of the new gods; they are popping up all over the place right now.”

  A neutral voice rang out over the room.

  [I now call into order the neutral meeting of the gods. We will now hear complaints.]